Sons and Fathers

by Harry Stillwell Edwards

  CHAPTER X.

  "GOD PITY ME! GOD PITY ME!"

  Edward was sitting thus lost in the contemplation of the circumstancessurrounding him, when by that subtle sense as yet not analyzed he feltthe presence of another person in the room, and looked over hisshoulder. Gerald was advancing toward him smiling mysteriously. Edwardnoticed his burning eyes and saw intense mental excitement gleamingbeyond. The man's mood was different from any he had before revealed.

  "So you have been out among the friends of your family," he said, withhis queer smile. "How did you like them?" Edward was distinctly offendedby the supercilious manner and impertinent question, but he rememberedhis ward's condition and resentment passed from him.

  "Pleasant people, Gerald, but I am not gifted with the faculty of makingfriends easily. How come on your experiments?"

  The visitor's expression changed. He looked about him guardedly. "Theyadvance," he replied, in a whisper; "they advance!"

  Whatever his motive for entering that room--a room unfamiliar to him,for his restless eyes had searched it over and over in the few minuteshe had been in it--was forgotten in the enthusiasm of the scientist. "Ihave mapped out a course and am working toward it," he said; and thenpresently: "You remember that pictures can now be transmitted byelectricity across great stretches of space and flashed upon a disc? Sogoes the scene from the convex surface of the eye along a thread-likenerve, so flashed the picture in the brain. But somewhere there itremains. How to prove it, to prove it, that is the question! Oh, for abrain, a brain to dissect!" He glared at Edward, who shuddered under thewildness of the eyes bent upon him. "But time enough for that; I mustfirst ascertain if a picture can be imprinted upon any living substanceby light, and remain. This I can do in another way."

  "How?" Edward was fascinated.

  "It is a great idea. The fish's eye will not do; it is itself a cameraand the protecting film is impression-proof. It lacks the gelatinesurface, but over some fish is spread the real gelatine--in fact, thevery stuff that sensitive plates rely upon. In our lake is a great bass,that swims deep. I have caught them weighing ten and twelve pounds. Theyare pale, greenish white until exposed to the light, when they darken.If the combined action of the light and air did not actually destroythis gelatine, they would turn black. The back, which daily receives thedownward ray direct, is as are the backs of most fishes, dark; it is aspoiled plate. But not so the sides. It is upon this fish I am preparingto make pictures."

  "But how?" Gerald smiled and shook his head.

  "Wait. It is too important to talk about in advance."

  Edward regarded him long and thoughtfully and felt rising within him agreater sympathy. It was pitiful that such a mind should die in theembrace of a mere drug, dragged down to destruction by a habit. "Beyondthe scope of any single university," but not beyond the slavery of aweed.

  "I have been thinking, Gerald," he said, finally, fixing a steady gazeupon the restless eyes of his visitor, "that the day is near at handwhen you must bring to your rescue the power of a great will."

  Gerald listened, grew pale and remained silent. Presently he turned tothe speaker.

  "You know, then. Tell me what to do."

  "You must cease the use of morphine and opium."

  Gerald drew a deep breath and smiled good-naturedly.

  "Oh, that is it," he said; "some one has told you that I am a victim ofmorphine and opium. Well, what would you think if I should tell you heis simply mistaken?"

  His face was frank and unclouded. Edward gazed upon him, incredulous.After a moment's pause, during which Gerald enjoyed his astonishment, hecontinued:

  "I was once a victim; there is no doubt of that; but now I am cured. Itwas a frightful struggle. A man who has not experienced it or witnessedit can form no conception of what it means to break away from habitualuse of opium. Some day you may need it and my experience will help you.I began by cutting my customary allowance for a day in half, and dayafter day, week after week, I kept cutting it in half until the timecame when I could not divide it with a razor. Would you believe it, thehabit was as strong in the end as the beginning? I lay awake and thoughtof that little speck by the hours; I tossed and cried myself to sleepover it! I slept and wept myself awake. The only remedy for this and allhabits is a mental victory. I made the fight--I won!

  "I can never forget that day," and he smiled as he said it; "the day Ifound it impossible to divide the speck of opium; a breath would haveblown it away, but I would have murdered the man who breathed upon it. Iswallowed it; the touch of that atom is yet upon my tongue; I swallowedit and slept like a child; and then came the waking! For days I was amaniac--but it passed.

  "I grew into a new life--a beautiful, peaceful world. It had been aroundme all the time but I had forgotten how it looked; a blissful world! Iwas cured.

  "Years have passed since that day, and no taste of the hateful drug hasever been upon my tongue. Not for all the gold in the universe, not forany secrets of science, not for a look back into the face of my mother,"he cried, hoarsely, rising to his feet; "not for a smile from heavenwould I lay hands upon that fiend again!"

  He closed abruptly, his hand trembling, the perspiration beading hisbrow. His eyes fell and the woman Rita stood before them, a look ofineffable sadness and tenderness upon her face.

  "Will you retire now, Master Gerald?" she said, gently. Without a wordhe turned and left the room. She was about to follow when Edward,excited and touched by the scene he had witnessed and full ofdiscoveries, stopped her with an imperious gesture.

  For a moment he paced the room. Rita was motionless, awaiting withevident nervousness his pleasure. He came and stood before her, and,looking her steadily in the face, said, abruptly:

  "Woman, what is the name of that young man, and what is mine?"

  She drew back quickly and her lips parted in a gasp.

  "My God!" he heard her whisper.

  "I demand an answer! You carry the secret of one of us--probably both.Which is the son of Marion Evans?"

  She sank upon her knees and hid her face in her apron.

  It was all true, then. Edward felt as though he himself would sink downbeside her if the silence continued.

  "Say it," he said, hoarsely; "say it!"

  "As God is my judge," she answered, faintly, "I do not know."

  "One is?"

  "One is."

  "And the other--who is he?"

  "Mine." The answer was like a whisper from the pines wafted in throughthe open window. It was loud enough. Edward caught the chair forsupport. The world reeled about him. He suffocated.

  Rita still knelt with covered head, but her trembling form betrayed thepresence of the long-restrained emotions. He walked unsteadily to themantel, and, drawing the cover from the little picture, went to themirror and placed it again by his face. At length he said in despair:

  "God pity me! God pity me!"

  The woman arose then and took the picture and gazed long and earnestlyupon it. A sob burst from her lips. Lifting it again to the level of theman's face, she looked from one to the other.

  "Enough!" he said, reading it aright.

  Despair had settled over his own face. She handed back the littlelikeness, and, clasping her hands, stood in simple dignity awaiting hiswill. He noticed then, as he studied her countenance closely, the linesof suffering there; the infallible record that some faces carry, which,whether it stands for remorse, for patience, for pure, unbroken sorrow,is always a consecration.

  "Master, it must have come some time," she said, at length, "but I havehoped it would not be through me." Her voice was just audible.

  "Be seated," said Morgan. "If your story is true, and it may be so, youshould not stand." He turned away from her and walked to the window; shewas seeking for an opening to begin her story. He began for her:

  "You crouched in a church door to avoid the storm; a woman seekingshelter there appeared just outside. She was attacked by a man and fellto the ground unconscious; you carried her off in your arms;
her childwas born soon after, and what then?"

  Amazed she stared at him a moment in silence.

  "And mine was born! The fright, the horror, the sickness! It was aterrible dream; a terrible dream! But a month afterward, I was herealone with two babies at my breast and the mother was gone. God help me,and help her! But in that time Master John says I lost the memory of mychild! Master Gerald I claimed, but his face was the face of MissMarion, and he was white and delicate like her. And you, sir, were dark.And then I had never been a slave; John Morgan's father gave me myliberty when I was born. I lived with him until my marriage, then aftermy husband's death, which was just before this storm, they brought mehere and I waited. She never came back. Master Gerald was sickly alwaysand we kept him, but they sent you away. Master John thought it wasbest. And the years have passed quickly."

  "And General Evan--did he never know?"

  "No, sir; I would not let them take Master Gerald, because I believed hewas my child; and Master John, I suppose, would not believe in you. Thefamilies are proud; we let things rest as they were, thinking MissMarion would come back some day. But she will not come now; she will notcome!"

  The miserable secret was out. After a long silence Edward lifted hishead and said with deep emotion: "Then, in your opinion, I am your son?"She looked at him sadly and nodded.

  "And in the opinion of John Morgan, Gerald is the son of Marion Evans?"She bowed.

  "We have let it stand that way. But you should never have known! I donot think you were ever to have known." The painful silence thatfollowed was broken by his question:

  "Gerald's real name?"

  "I do not know! I do not know! All that I do know I have told you!"

  "And the child's coffin?" She pressed her hand to her forehead.

  "It was a dream; I do not know!"

  He gazed upon her with profound emotion and pity.

  "You must be tired," he said, gently. "Think no more of these troublesto-night."

  She turned and went away. He followed to the head of the stairs andwaited until he heard her step in the hall below.

  "Good-night," he had said, gravely. And from the shadowy depths belowcame back a faint, mournful echo of the word.

  When Edward returned to the room he sat by the window and buried hisface upon his arm. Hour after hour passed; the outer world slept. Had hebeen of the south, reared there and a sharer in its traditions, thesecret would have died with him that night and its passing would havebeen signaled by a single pistol shot. But he was not of the south, inexperience, association or education.

  It was in the hush of midnight that he rose from his seat, took thepicture and descended the steps. The wing-room was never locked; heentered. Through the drawn curtains of the glass-room he saw the form ofGerald lying in the moonlight upon his narrow bed. Placing the picturebeside the still, white face of the sleeper, he was shocked by thelikeness. One glance was enough. He went back to his window again.

  One, two, three, four o'clock from the distant church steeple.

  How the solemn numbers have tolled above the sorrow-folds of the humanheart and echoed in the dewless valleys of the mind, the depths to whichwe sink when hope is gone!

  But with the dawn what shadows flee!

  So came the dawn at last; the pale, tremulous glimmer on the easternhills, the white light, the rosy flush and then in the splendor offading mists the giant sun rolled up the sky.

  A man stood pale and weary before the open window at Ilexhurst. "Theodds are against me," he said, grimly, "but I feel a power within mestronger than evidence. I will match it against the word of this woman,though every circumstance strengthened that word. The voice of theCaucasian, not the voice of Ethiopia, speaks within me! The woman doesnot believe herself; the mother's instinct has been baffled, but notdestroyed!"

  And yet again, the patrician bearing, the aristocrat! Such was Gerald.

  "We shall see," he said, between his teeth. "Wait until Virdow comes!"

  Nevertheless, when, not having slept, he arose late in the day, he wasalmost overwhelmed with the memory of the revelation made to him, andthe effect it must have upon his future.

  At that moment there came into his mind the face of Mary.